Twilio

What is Possible with the Paminga Twilio Integration?

The Paminga Twilio integration lets you send SMS text messages from Paminga. You write Text Messages in the Marketing Center, then send them from a Drip Series the same way you send an email.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

You will need two things in order to start setting up your Twilio Integration with Paminga

• Twilio Account – you can create one here.

• Twilio Phone Number – At least one phone number is required on the account.

Billing

• Billing for the sending of messages will be done through Twilio. At this time, Paminga does not charge an additional for this service (subject to change).

• Phone numbers that are used to send messages will be billed directly by Twilio.

• There are a number of factors that affect billing including the number of phone numbers, Country, and number of segments, to name a few. Please refer to Twilio for up-to-date pricing.

The Setup

To connect Twilio to Paminga, you'll save three credentials in Paminga. Go to Account Settings › Integrations, find the Twilio card, and click Configure.

• Account SID – From the dashboard in Twilio, click settings. The account SID can be found under the API credentials page. Or, this page when logged in to Twilio.

• Auth Token – Found on the same page as the Account SID under the API credentials section. Also found on this page.

• Messaging Services SID – Once signed into an account, the Messaging Services SID can be generated via this link.

  • Click the “+” icon and enter a friendly name like “Paminga Integration”.

  • Select “Marketing, Outbound Only” as the use case.

  • The inbound and outbound settings can be left to default.

  • Click Save.

  • Navigate to the Numbers page on the left navigation.

  • Add at least one phone number to the new messaging service.

    • Phone numbers can have ‘friendly names’ for internal use.

    • Multiple phone numbers can be added to the messaging services depending on the sending limit the client would like to have.

Once you have the three credentials above, enter them as Account SID, Auth Token, and Messaging Service SID in the Connect to Twilio panel in Paminga and click Connect Twilio. You're connected.

Create and Send a Text Message

With Twilio connected, go to Marketing Center › Text Messages and click Create Text Message. Give the message a name (for internal use only), write the content you want to send, and click Create. See Text Messages for more.

To send it, open a Drip Series and, on the Actions step, choose Add Text Message from the plus (+) between steps, then select your message. The Add Text Message option only appears once Twilio is connected.

Each text message goes to the contact's Mobile Phone. Contacts without a mobile phone number on file are skipped.

Current Limitations

• Auto Recharge is Strongly Recommended

  • In your Twilio account, there is an option to turn on Auto Recharge. This is not mandatory, but it is strongly recommended. A Twilio account balance is what is used to bill for messages sent. If there is not enough account balance when a campaign is sent out, there will be enough texts/SMSs sent to use the remainder of the account balance. The remainder of the campaign will not be sent. We are at this point not able to differentiate what contacts the SMS was sent to or have the ability to resend the campaign.

  • To enable Auto Recharge, sign into the Twilio account and click on the Billing tab on the left navigation. This will bring you to the Billing Overview page. In the first section, Billing Information, enter a payment method to store on file. There is a toggle to Enable Auto Recharge along with the option to set the amount when the balance falls below and what to recharge that amount to.

• Billed by Segment, not by Message

  • Twilio defines segments as the message received by the end-user, rather than the message sent. That means that a single long message could be sent over multiple messages to a recipient (Example: message 1 of 3). Each of these three segments is billable, even though one message was sent to the user. There are a number of factors that determine the length of a message including character encoding, personalized fields, among others.

• Text Only

  • Support for the content of the messages will be limited to text only. Images and HTML will not be sent. If a link is included, it is up to the receiver’s phone to make the link clickable.

    • Note, to include links, the full URL is all that is needed. Do not include an HREF tag or any other HTML.

• Phone Number Capacity

  • The number of SMS messages that can be sent in a given period of time is limited to the number of phone numbers that have been added to the account. Each number has an incoming and outgoing limit of 1 message per second. Note that each additional phone number is subject to a fee. Multiple phone numbers are optional but at least one phone number is required. There are a number of factors that determine the limitations of the number of messages that can be sent. For details, visit this page.

• Text Messages Are Sent From Drip Series

  • Add a text message to a Drip Series with Add Text Message, alongside or instead of emails.